2 out of 5

Label: Cut Lips Recordings

Produced by: Die Princess Die, Dan Maier (recorded by)

Generic punk hardcore with some okay beats.

I’m not positive what led me to DPD, but I’m pretty sure I heard a cut from the album following this on a compilation, which isn’t a bad way to experience the band: taken in small doses, you can focus on the better pieces.  And, of course, this doesn’t expose you to the relative unremarkable nature of their sound when heard across several tracks.  Certain cuts find the group focusing more on bass and drum interplay than exploding into vocal-distorted yelly hardcore; these are the album’s highlights.  Tracks like ‘Cynaptic’ show off a sense for a good, driving rhythm built from some simple – but intense – elements.  But for every groove that the group settles into, they tend to follow it up with predictable guitar shredding verse, made more predictable by lyrics that pluck at the easiest possible rhymes.  Sequenced together – with some pointless ‘remix’ tracks that don’t even bother to have an actual ending – DPD has some energy, and some good moments, but nothing that bumps it above average, and enough fallbacks on structural cliches to knock it down a peg.